Rock Creek Gold, 20″ x 16″, UART320

Underpainting, stage 1

Underpainting, stage 2

Initial lay in of color over underpainting

Final before reassessment

I’ve just finished a painting from my visit to Rock Creek Park near Pierce’s mill when the leaves were at their peak.  I knew I wanted to do this one and originally thought I’d do it larger. But the boards didn’t come and I have a lot of 16 x 20s so went with that.  I started with a simple drawing of the basic shapes, then laid in colors of violets and browns.  I loved the underpainting before I used the alcohol and I thought about spraying it with fixative rather than melting it.  But I think the alcoholed underpainting was more useful. However, I’m thinking more about using the fixative now that I’m in my home studio and can step out to the patio to spray.

This was a really complicated painting!  There are two layers to the bank and then there is a “skirt” of floating leaves in light and shadow. On the far bank there are rocks catching the sunlight.  There is a mass of orange and yellow leaves and some sky poking through.  I wanted this to be about the reflections and the yellowest of the leaves but I got lost in the light!  I thought I was done with the painting yesterday but knew I wasn’t completely happy with it.  The little rocks seemed a distraction and I wasn’t sure the light made any sense.

I sent the painting (“final before assessment”) to my fall students for their evaluation.  I got some good comments and suggestions from them and thought about it overnight and this morning knew what to do.  First, I addressed the comment that the yellow leaves were leading the eye off the picture plane.  So I added veritcal leaves that lead back to the left.  Then I decided that if the light is coming from the back around the corner, that the lower left of the bank has to be pretty dark.  So I got rid of most of the light, leaving just a few pieces that worked with the light on the floating leaves.  Then I dulled down the rocks.  I also added more color and texture to the floating leaves to try to make it more obvious what they are.

One of the problems with the photo was that the big tree on left had no leaves over it. Looking at another photo, I realized that its base is at the lower left of the bank.  However, I had moved it back and realized that I could cover it with some leaves, which really helped to keep it from being too dominant.

Colorwise, this picture is all warm oranges, yellows and yellow greens with violets and turquoise in the sky.  My first layers were all Girault.  Then I used my “lemon” and “orange” boxes of Blue Earth pastels to develop the leaves and the reflections.  I used some finger blending in the water to push the pastel into the paper and make sure it’s texture was completely different from what is above.

So I’m pretty happy with this!  I’m not sure if I’ll do more painting before Christmas so I’ll take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Hanukkah and a Merry Christmas–knowing that we’ll be celebrating more quietly than usual.